Mobile communication systems continue to grow in popularity and have become an integral part of both personal and business communications. Various mobile devices now incorporate Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) features such as calendars, address books, task lists, calculators, memo and writing programs, media players, games, etc. These multi-function devices also allow users to send and receive electronic mail (email) messages wirelessly and access the Internet via a cellular network and/or a wireless local area network (WLAN), for example. In addition, these devices may allow users to send Short Messaging Service (SMS) messages, Personal Identification Number (PIN) messages, and instant messages.
Given the amount of information now stored on a mobile device itself, and the amount of data remotely accessible by the mobile device, a user may wish to search for a specific e-mail, media file, or contact, for example. To facilitate this, some applications that reside on a mobile device may permit users to search data managed by those applications and stored locally on the mobile device. For example, a messaging application may permit a user to search the contents of e-mail messages or text messages stored on the device, so that the user may locate messages containing a particular keyword. Other types of applications may also provide search capabilities. For example, a media player application that manages audio files (e.g. music files) stored on the device may permit a user to search information associated with music files, so that the user may find songs with a title or artist name containing a particular keyword. As a further example, an application used to manage photos stored on the device may permit a user to search photo descriptions for a particular keyword.